The passages below are taken from Max
Lucado’s book “Come Thirsty,” published in 2004 by W Publishing Group.

Why anyone would pester Hannah Lake is
beyond me. If the sweet face of this ten-year-old doesn’t de-starch your shirt,
her cherubic voice will. But, according to her dad, a grade school bully tried
to stir some trouble. Intimidation tactics, pressure---the pest tried it all.
But Hannah didn’t fold. And in the end, it was not her dimples or tender voice
but her faith that pulled her through.

The older student warned Hannah to
prepare for battle. “Any day now I’m coming after you.” Hannah didn’t flinch or
cry. She simply informed the perpetrator about the facts. “Do whatever you need
to do,” she explained. “But just know this: God is on my side.”

Last word has it that no more threats
have been made.

Elementary school bullies don’t await
you, but funeral homes do. Job transfers and fair-weather friends do. Challenges
pockmark the pathway of your life. Where do you find energy to face them? God
never promises an absence of distress. But he does promise the assuring presence
of his Holy Spirit.

At first blush, a person might assume
that the Holy Spirit is all about the spectacular and stupendous. We’ve seen the
television images of sweating preachers, fainting and falling audiences,
unintelligible tongue speaking, and questionable miracle working. While no one
would deny the pupil-popping nature of the Holy Spirit’s work (tongues of fire
over the apostles’ heads), a focus on the phenomenal might lead you to miss his
quieter stabilizing work.

The Holy Spirit invisibly, yet
indispensably, serves as a rudder for the ship of your soul, keeping you afloat
and on track. This is no
solo journey. Next time you feel as though it is, review some of the
gifts the Spirit gives. For example, “you were sealed in Him with the Holy
Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance” (Ephesians
1:13—14 NASB).

The Spirit seals you.
The verb sealed stirs a variety of images. To protect a letter, you seal the
envelope. To keep air out of a jar, you seal its mouth with a rubber-ringed lid.
To keep oxygen from the wine, you seal the opening with cork and wax. To seal a
deal, you might sign a contract or notarize a signature. Sealing declares
ownership and secures contents.

The most famous New Testament “sealing”
occurred with the tomb of Jesus. Roman soldiers rolled a rock over the entrance
and “set a seal on the stone” (Matthew 27:66 NASB). Archaeologists envision two
ribbons stretched in front of the entrance, glued together with hardened wax
that bore the imprimatur of the Roman government----SPQR (Senatus Populusque
Romanus)---as if to say, “Stay away! The contents of this tomb belong to
Rome.” Their seal, of course, proved futile.

The seal of the Spirit, however, proves
forceful. When you accepted Christ, God sealed you with the Spirit. “Having
believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit”
(Ephesians 1:13 NIV). When hell’s interlopers come seeking to snatch you from
God, the seal turns them away. He bought you, owns you, and protects you. God
paid too high a price to leave you unguarded. As Paul writes later, “Remember,
he is the one who has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be
saved on the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30 NLT).

In his delightful book The Dance of
Hope, my friend Bill Frey tells of a blind student named John, whom he
tutored at the University of Colorado in 1951. One day Bill asked John how he
had become blind. The sightless student described an accident that had happened
in his teenage years. The tragedy took not just the boy’s sight but also his
hope. He told Bill, “I was bitter and angry with God for letting it happen, and
I took my anger out on everyone around me. I felt that since I had no future, I
wouldn’t lift a finger on my own behalf. Let others wait on me. I shut my
bedroom door and refused to come out except for meals.”

His admission surprised Bill. The student
he assisted displayed no bitterness or anger. He asked John to explain the
change. John credited his father. Weary of the pity party and ready for his
son to get on with life, he reminded the boy of the impending winter and told
him to mount the storm windows. “Do the work before I get home or else,” the dad
insisted, slamming the door on the way out.

John reacted with anger. Muttering and
cursing and groping all the way to the garage, he found the windows, stepladder,
and tools and went to work. “They’ll be sorry when I fall off my ladder and
break my neck.” But he didn’t fall. Little by little he inched around the house
and finished the chore.

The assignment achieved the dad’s goal.
John reluctantly realized he could still work and began to reconstruct his life.
Years later he learned something else about that day. When he shared this detail
with Bill, his blind eyes misted. “I later discovered that at no time during
the day had my father ever been more than four or five feet from my side.”

The father had no intention of letting
the boy fall.

Your Father has no intention of letting
you fall, either. You can’t see him, but he is present. You are “shielded by
God’s power” (1 Peter 1:5
NIV). He is “able to keep you from falling and to present you before his
glorious presence without fault and with great joy” (Jude 24 NIV).

Drink deeply from this truth. God is able
to keep you from falling! Does he want you living in fear? No! Just the
opposite. “The Spirit we received does not make us slaves again to fear; it
makes us children of God. With that Spirit we cry out, ‘Father.’ And the Spirit
himself joins with our spirits to say we are God’s children”
(Rom. 8:15—16 NCV).

What an intriguing statement. Deep
within you, God’s Spirit confirms with your spirit that you belong to him.
Beneath the vitals of the heart, God’s Spirit whispers, “You are mine. I bought
you and sealed you, and no one can take you.” The Spirit offers an inward,
comforting witness.

He is like a father who walks hand in
hand with his little child. The child knows he belongs to his daddy, his small
hand happily lost in the large one. He feels no uncertainty about his papa’s
love. But suddenly the father, moved by some impulse, swings his boy up into the
air and into his arms and says, “I love you, son.” He puts a big kiss on the
bubbly cheek, lowers the boy to the ground, and the two go on walking together.

Has the relationship between the two
changed? On one level, no. The father is no more the father than he was before
the expression of love. But on a deeper level, yes. The dad drenched,
showered, and saturated the boy in love. God’s Spirit does the same with us.
“The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who
was given to us” (Romans 5:5 NKJV). Note the preposition of. The Holy Spirit
pours the love of God in our hearts, not love for God. God hands a bucket
of love to the Spirit and instructs, “Douse their hearts.”

There are moments when the Spirit
enchants us with sweet rhapsody. You belong to the Father. Signed, sealed, and
soon-to-be delivered. Been a while since you heard him whisper words of
assurance? Then tell him. He’s listening to you. And---get this!— he’s speaking
for you.

The Spirit comes to the aid of our
weakness. We do not
even know how we ought to pray, but through our inarticulate groans the
Spirit himself is pleading for us, and God who searches our inmost being
knows what the Spirit means, because he pleads for God’s own people in God’s
own way. (Romans 8:26—27 NEB)

The Spirit comes to the aid of our
weakness. What a sentence
worthy of a highlighter. Who does not need this reminder? Weak bodies. Weak
wills. Weakened resolves. We’ve known them all. The word weakness can refer
to physical infirmities, as with the invalid who had been unable to walk for
thirty-eight years (John 5:5), or spiritual impotence, as with the spiritually
“helpless” of Romans 5:6.

Whether we are feeble of soul or body or
both, how good to know it’s not up to us. “The Spirit himself is pleading for
us.”

I witnessed a picture of the strong
speaking for the weak during a White House briefing on the AIDS crisis. While
most of the attendees represented relief organizations, a few ministers were
invited. The agenda of the day included a Q and A with a White House staffer
charged with partial oversight of several billion dollars earmarked for AIDS
prevention and treatment. There were many questions. How does one qualify? How
much can an organization hope to receive? What are the requirements, if any, for
using the moneys? Most of the questions came from organizations. Most of us
ministers were silent.

But not Bob Coy. Bob serves a large
congregation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. From earlier conversations, I knew of
his heart for AIDS victims. When he raised his hand, I expected a policy
question. Wrong. He had a personal question. “One of my friends in Miami is
dying from AIDS. He spends two thousand dollars a month on medication. With
insurance balking at coverage, I’m wondering if I might find him some
assistance.”

The White House policy staffer was
surprised, but polite. “Uh, sure. After the meeting I’ll put you in touch with
the right person.”

The minister, determined to bring the
problem to the top of the food chain, remained standing. He held up a few sheets
of stapled paper. “I brought his documents with me. If more is needed, I can run
them down.”

The government official remained polite.
“Absolutely. After the meeting.”

He had fielded another question or two
when he noticed the minister from Florida had raised his hand again. This time
the preacher went to the bottom line. “I’m still thinking of my friend,” he
explained. “Who signs the checks?”

“Excuse me?“

“Who signs the checks? I just want to
talk to the person who makes the decisions. So I want to know, who signs the
checks?”

My initial response was, What audacity!
The minister seizing a White House moment to help a friend. Then I thought, What
loyalty! Does the bedridden friend in Florida have any idea that his cause is
being presented a few hundred feet from the Oval Office?

Do you have any idea that your needs are
being described in heaven? The Holy Spirit “prays for us with groanings that
cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the
Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s
own will” (Romans 8:26—27 NLT).

The AIDS-infected man has no voice, no
clout, and no influence. But he has a friend. And his friend speaks on his
behalf. The impoverished orphan of Russia, the distraught widow of the
battle-field, the aging saint in the convalescent home--—they may think they
have no voice, no clout, no influence. But they have a friend---a counselor, a
comforter---the blessed Spirit of God, who speaks the language of heaven in
heaven. “He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless
sighs, our aching groans. He . . . keeps us present before God”
(vv. 26—27 MSG).

It’s not up to you to pray your prayers.
None of us pray as much as we should, but all of us pray more than we think,
because the Holy Spirit turns our sighs into petitions and tears into
entreaties. He speaks for you and protects you. He makes sure you get heard. He
makes sure you get home.

Now, suppose a person never hears this,
never learns about the sealing and intercession of the Spirit. This individual
thinks that salvation security resides in self, not God, that prayer power
depends on the person, not the Spirit. What kind of life will this person lead?

A parched and prayerless one. Fighting to
stay spiritually afloat drains him. Thinking he stands alone before God
discourages him. So he lives parched and prayerless.

But what about the one who believes in
the work of the Spirit? Really believes. Suppose a person drinks from this
fountain? Better still, suppose you do. Suppose you let the Spirit saturate you
with assurance.After all,
“we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours
into our lives through the Holy Spirit!” (Romans 5:5 MSG)

Will you be different as a result? You
bet your sweet Sunday you will. Your shoulders will lift as you lower the
buckling weight of self-salvation. Your knees will bend as you discover the
buoyant power of the praying Spirit. Higher walk. Deeper prayers. And, most
of all, a quiet confidence that comes from knowing it’s not up to you.
And you, like Hannah, can tell the pests of the world, “Do whatever you need to
do. But just know this: God is on my side.” (79-86)